


The Antique Shop

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [32]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23399131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: The team raids an antique shop.
Series: Mikkel's Story [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Kudos: 5





	The Antique Shop

Standing guard while the other three immunes scavenged, Mikkel leaned for a few moments on the hood of the tank, his trusty crowbar in his hand but down by his side, not at the ready, and his dagger sheathed, though his eyes never ceased searching the overgrown fields around them for possible enemies. Once he glanced up at the kitten, who had found that she could jump onto the hood and from there to the roof, where she had settled herself atop one of the two large triangular driving lights, standing guard in her own way.

Tuuri, sitting on the hood with the map in her lap, commented, “We'll definitely be there soon, no matter what. In a couple of days, at most!”

“Interesting. I do seem to recall 'a couple of days' being the estimate a good while back,” he answered, smiling slightly.

“I don't think it was,” she muttered, reddening a little, and Mikkel kept quiet, reminding himself of his resolution not to mock or humiliate his few teammates.

Somewhat to his left, his other charge, Reynir, was building a foot-high flock of snow sheep. The Icelander had four ewes already and was carefully adding twig horns to his ram when all three came alert at the sound of a distant explosion.

Mikkel took several steps forward then stopped himself, looking at Tuuri who looked back with wide eyes and an expression of mingled excitement and fear. “Get in the tank,” he ordered, and to Reynir, “Get the kitten and get in the tank.”

“But –” Tuuri objected “– Lalli said we can't get the tank into the town. We can't –”

“We may have to run. Get in the tank.” When she continued to hesitate, “ **Go!** ” She went, and Reynir hastened to scramble down with the kitten and follow her in.

Mikkel stared in the direction of the town, hidden behind a low ridge. _What if the others don't come back? What if they were hurt or trapped in that explosion? Will I really order Tuuri to drive away this evening and leave them? Never know if they could have been saved?_ He had come to think of the non-immunes almost as soldiers under his command, and so it did not occur to him to wonder if Tuuri would _obey_ an order to drive away.

_Those two are safe enough in the tank, as safe as they'd be with me here. If there's anything big enough to damage the tank, I can't stop it. I can go to the others … no. If they … don't come back … that leaves me as the only immune. If I go into the town and get killed too, these children are doomed. Two non-immunes trying to find their way to the coast and wait for rescue, with no scout and no immune to gather fuel … no._

_I have to stay._

_I know my duty._

He shook himself and forced his feet to take him around the tank. Diligently studying the surroundings for anything that might be sneaking up on them, he still couldn't stop himself from looking again and again toward the hidden town while part of his mind tortured the rest with images of his teammates – no, his _friends_ – injured and unable to move when he could carry them out, or pinned under a fallen beam that he could lift and they could not.

And so time passed for almost an hour.

* * *

Someone was climbing over the ridge, coming his way. The sun shone brightly on golden hair and Mikkel recognized Emil – alone. His heart sank as he started forward to meet the other.

Fortunately the Swede didn't keep him in suspense for long. “Mikkel! Get the others and come on! Lalli found a treasure trove and we need you guys to help!”

Relief all but staggered the Dane. It took him a moment to pull himself together and run back to the tank, gesturing for the others to come out. Emil ran alongside him, explaining, “It's an antique shop and it's in really good shape and the windows aren't broken and we can see it's full of books and lots of other things! It's the best place we've seen yet! And Lalli says there's no danger so there shouldn't be any trolls and Sigrun says Tuuri and _him_ can come help.”

He breathlessly repeated the whole story to the non-immunes while Mikkel thoroughly checked the security of the tank. He didn't want to come back and find a grossling inside or even nearby without the alarm warning them.

As they started back to town, “Emil, we heard an explosion, what was that? We were … concerned.”

“Oh, um, that. The stash we were supposed to check on. The door was locked and jammed and we couldn't open it, so I got out my smallest explosive – it was really little, Mikkel, it should have just blown the door off but … um … maybe there were gasses built up inside or something … anyway, the whole building just … blew up. Sigrun likes explosions though, she thought that was pretty cool even though we lost the whole stash … but it doesn't matter because Lalli was scouting around and found this other place that's even better!”

“Wait, you said _Lalli_ said there's no danger? I mean, Tuuri wasn't there …”

“Oh, yeah, I guess she's taught him a little Swedish or maybe he's actually been listening to me when I try to talk to him … Anyway, he knew how to say 'no danger'. Kind of. I mean, we understood him. I tried to tell him 'good job' like Tuuri taught me, but I guess my Finnish is worse than his Swedish, because he stopped me. Oh, well. But the stash! Wait 'til you see it!”

They fell into proper order as they hiked to the town, Emil leading the way, Tuuri and Reynir, kitten on his shoulder, in the middle, and Mikkel as rear-guard.

“What's wrong, Reynir?” Tuuri asked. “You look worried.”

“Oh, I … I'm thinking about ghosts. All these empty houses … there might be more. In that store even.”

“Emil said Lalli said it was safe. And he can see the ghosts too, so if he says it's safe, it is.”

“Is it? He didn't warn us about the ghosts before … well, okay, that's not fair. Those first ghosts didn't seem mean, I guess. He didn't see those … others.”

“Mmm … well, you can warn us if you see any. It's broad daylight so we can get away.”

“Maybe … during the blizzard I kind of worked on something that might help … maybe …” His voice trailed off. Tuuri gave him a quizzical look then shrugged, seeming to dismiss the whole subject. Mikkel thought it was a good thing that Emil couldn't understand Icelandic, for he already had a low opinion of their newest teammate, and that discussion would not have helped.

* * *

The stash was everything the Swede had claimed. Just looking at it through the window, Mikkel was overcome with a kind of greed, not for the money which all those books represented, but for the knowledge that was hidden within their pages. He wanted them. He wanted them all. So distracted was he by the thought of all that knowledge _just_ out of reach and the problem of getting the door open without damaging anything inside, that he really didn't even hear Sigrun explaining her decision to send for the rest of the team until he realized that she was talking about him.

“... and the fact that you can carry as much as three random, boring dudes. I like that about you. So what I'm saying is: you're really good at muscles, which is great.”

He straightened from examining the door lock and turned to her with a courteous smile. “I'm flattered,” he said, with only a trace of sarcasm leaking through.

They were interrupted by Reynir approaching with a sheepish smile and tapping Mikkel's shoulder gently with a slightly torn piece of paper. Mikkel accepted the paper and examined the intricate drawing in puzzlement while the other pushed similar papers into the hands of the rest of the team. “What _is_ this?” he asked finally.

“It's a protection rune that I made for us. Pretty cool, huh? I remembered seeing one that was used to keep the sheep from wandering too far from the rune, and I thought …” He hesitated for a moment at the sight of Mikkel's skeptical expression, but ploughed gamely on. “... if I switch things around a little, it could instead keep _ghosts_ from wandering too _close_ to the rune, and to us.” He tried an apologetic smile while Mikkel turned away, not wanting to be seen rolling his eyes.

“Does it work?” Tuuri asked with interest, while Emil and Lalli, who had understood none of this, gave their copies looks of confusion and stuffed them into pockets.

“Uh … maybe? Possibly! It's better than nothing, at least. What do you think?” He added, turning anxiously to Mikkel.

“It's a very cute piece of decoration,” the skeptical Dane answered as kindly as he could manage.

“It's a little bit more than just decoration,” the Icelander returned defensively.

“It's decoration.” There was a limit to how far he would go to humor the other.

Sigrun had understood none of the discussion, but she recognized the type of drawing. “I like the effort, but as far as I know, stuff like this works _way_ better when drawn in blood; the gods _love_ blood. Just saying. I'm not an expert or anything.”

Reynir turned to her and then back to Mikkel. “What did she say?”

“Switch your drawing medium to blood in the future; your gods are _very_ fond of that.” He managed to say it with an almost straight face, reminding himself not to mock or humiliate his teammates. But really, how could one _not_ mock this silliness? Bits of paper to defend against … he remembered the _voice_ , and the pain. None of this fit in his tidy understanding of the world, so why _not_ bits of paper?

He put the drawing in his pocket and turned away as Reynir gulped and replied, “No, that's … gross.”

There were no ghosts in the shop and the kitten, peering around with interest, made it clear that there were also no grosslings. The air smelled stale but there was no tinge of rot, and Sigrun offered a gleeful high five to Mikkel.

“Hey, how do I say 'good job' in Finnish again?” That was Emil, talking instead of examining books.

“I can write it on your hand, if you're having trouble remembering …” Tuuri wasn't examining books either, Mikkel thought. What kind of skald could look at _this_ and be interested in anything else?

“I'll remember,” Emil answered impatiently, turning at last to the books while Tuuri wandered over to talk to Lalli, who was fascinated by the globe which took pride of place on one table. Mikkel hoped he wouldn't want to take the globe; such things existed in Iceland, at least, and they had little enough room for the books. But at last Tuuri too began to examine the books.

“Exercise judgement,” Mikkel instructed. “We can only carry so many books –” and how he hated to say that! He wanted _all_ of them! – “so we need to take only the most valuable.”

Even Reynir began to examine the books, but he soon said, in some confusion, “These are some really odd runes. I don't think I can use them.”

“Do not touch anything, Reynir,” Mikkel ordered. The Icelander was not really part of the team and Mikkel didn't entirely trust him to be careful.

“I know what that language is,” Emil put in. “It's called 'Kung fu'.”

“Actually, it's called 'Chinalandic',” Tuuri corrected incorrectly. “Gosh,” she added, awed at the thought of an entire book in a language of which only a few pages survived in Finland.

“Mandarin, most likely,” Mikkel added, having seen one of the rare books in Iceland.

“No it isn't,” Sigrun argued. “Mandarin is a fruit.”

“The word can refer to that too,” Mikkel answered, turning to her with a raised eyebrow. “I'm impressed you'd know such a thing.”

“Oh yeah, we get a _ton_ of fruit sent over from the greenhouses in Iceland. I know _all_ the fruits! A mandarin tastes like a lemon that killed itself!”

Boggled by the image, Mikkel made no reply and after a brief silence, Tuuri said wistfully, “Do you ever think there might be other people like us out there, far, far away? And maybe they've found a book in one of _our_ languages, and they're now thinking 'huh, what a weird language. I wonder if people who spoke it are still out there?' Wouldn't that be cool?!”

“Yep, would be cool,” Sigrun answered, “but that's way unlikely.”

“How so?”

“Simple: the poor sods didn't have anywhere to go, they didn't have big forests, islands and mountains to hide in in the rest of the world like we do. They had big cities and fields.”

“I'm pretty sure there's mountains elsewhere too,” Tuuri answered with a grin.

“Dunno about that …”

“That right there looks like mountains people could live in, and it's definitely not from around here.” Tuuri pointed at a painting hung – still hanging! – on the wall. The entire team turned to admire the painting.

 _Too big to take back with us,_ Mikkel thought. _Oh, so many treasures to be left behind! I'll have to fasten the door shut as best I can – maybe nail it? Surely we can find some boards and nails … the next expedition **must** come clean this out!_

His thoughts were interrupted as Sigrun turned to him. “Hey, you think that's a picture of an actual place that exists, or …”

“I have no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Let's go check it out then! If there might be a whole other nation out there we've got to at least go say hello! We're on a detour anyway, how long will it take for us to get there?”

He admired her enthusiasm and regretted the need to throw cold water on it, but he had a pretty good image of the European continent in his memory, and he knew just how small Denmark was in comparison. “Well, assuming we are able to keep this pace … a decade …”

“Okay, let's not do that right now then. What is it, the other side of the world or something?”

“Figuratively speaking, yes.”

And so the conversation ended, Sigrun went to the door to watch for intruders, and Mikkel went back to examining the books, picking out those he would take and, with a pang every time, returning to the shelves those he would leave behind. He focused on science and history, rejecting anything that looked like fiction or in any way frivolous. _But someone will return for you,_ he told the books silently.

Reynir wandered about, hands in pockets, scrupulously not touching anything. As he put the last few precious books in his pack, Mikkel heard a crash and tinkle of broken glass and saw Reynir holding a broken picture frame.

“I believe this is all we can carry today,” Mikkel told the others, heaving his pack to his back.

“Mikkel, what's this?” the Icelander asked with a strange urgency.

“It's –” Mikkel hastily brushed the other's gloves clean, fearing possible damage which would be difficult for him to fix, “– pieces of _broken glass! What_ did I tell you earlier?!”

Reynir turned away in silent disappointment as Sigrun asked cheerily, “Everyone ready to head back?”

They didn't quite leave immediately. Tuuri sent Lalli to find boards, nails, and a hammer and, in a remarkably short time, he returned with the required supplies. As he nailed the door closed, Mikkel presumed there was a hardware store around somewhere. “Secure,” he stated, hefting his pack again, and they started on the hike back to the tank.

“I think we can agree that with the collection we have managed to accumulate, we may all be proud upon our return to civilization,” he told Sigrun in quiet satisfaction.

“Mm-hm. Good vacation. I'll miss this.”


End file.
